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Letter from North Carolina: The Viper of my discontent

April 1, 2012

Pulitzer Prize winner Dan Neil drove a Viper for a 1995 issue of Autoweek. The 2013 SRT Viper will debut at this week's New York auto show.

With the public debut of the 2013 SRT Viper scheduled for the New York auto show, we've scoured the Autoweek archives to bring you some classic Viper stories from our past. For exclusive Viper Week content including the latest news as it happens, check out http://www.autoweek.com/viperweek

By Dan Neil, originally published in Autoweek 03/20/1995.

The borrowed Viper arrived in Raleigh, N.C., from Florida on a crisp, 40-degree January day. The delivery driver-tinged with blue, like an oyster-smiled weakly as he handed me the keys.

In minutes, I was in the country. The roadster's Stuka-like exhaust note rattled off barns and farm houses as I made one strafing run after another, my scarf doing frantic Isadora Duncans in the wind.

I was communing with nature.

But there was an object to all this.

Having read no Viper reviews with a Duluth dateline, I had wondered if the Dodge Viper, strapping hero of endless summer idylls, would be enfeebled by winter weather.

So I posed myself this question: What if you actually had to use the Viper as transportation in inclement weather?

As my core temperature dropped, I began to discover what if. For starters, the Viper's heating system is virtually nonexistent. I don't recall any buff book pointing this out. Clearly, the experts have been deceived by the happy little dial on the dash that seems to promise heat.

But once the car's V10 is warm, the Viper serves up a menu of Broiled Foot under Smoked Sock.

Suffering from hypothermia everywhere but my right ankle, and an icy crust in my mustache that made me wonder if there were such a thing as a Zamboni for the lips, I stopped and installed the top-a product of one of Asia's finer rickshaw factories-and secured the side curtains for the ride home.

That night, it dropped into the low 20s, as snow followed sleet followed a good and proper English torrent. An inch of ice had formed in the bottom of the car. The trunk was soaked, too, ruining my best Olympus camera. Surely, the buff books should have transcended their inamorato to report the car's incontinence.

My 9-year-old son Hank and I toweled out the Viper, and left it running with the defrost on high. But the heat created more steam from the soaked carpet than the tiny defroster could clear, and within minutes the car was socked in like Gatwick.

Meanwhile, scrawny wipers flailed fecklessly against the windshield. It was like being in the center of an ice cube.

But off we went anyway, wiping and squinting through apertures the size of pinhole cameras.

Even in perfect conditions, the Viper is a little tail-happy. Sometimes the power of 488 cubic inches comes on a wee bit suddenly. And, just as suddenly, the tail will step out with trailing throttle oversteer, as the inertia from a V10 pulls the Viper's nose to the ground.

In perfect conditions, the car's massive rear skins (275/30ZF-17s) keep it well planted between earth and sky. Even if you get sideways, a blast of throttle will maintain vector. But on cold, worn and (as I discovered later) overinflated tires, skimming across daiquiri slush, the Viper required a delicacy I regrettably lack. Try as I might, and despite Viper's smooth clutch uptake, I couldn't get away from the stoplights without a wiggle.

Across broken pavement, the Viper hunted ruts and cracks like a bloodhound, seeking out places to hydroplane and leaving me with handfuls of scary non-compliance.

Meanwhile, my son Hank and I are catching pneumonia.

Ten miles from my house, I catch a glimpse-through a plastic window darkly-of a highway patrolman beside me. We exchange waves. I eke away from him.

Then, as I am pulling away from a light, a Ford Mustang wallows into my lane. Petulant, I wrench the car to the right and give it half throttle.

It must have surprised the patrolman to see the headlights of the yellow Viper that had just passed him shining back into his eyes. He watched as I executed a 450-degree spin in the dark, like Brian Boitano with a miner's hat on.

The car stalled with its nose pointed into the median. As I opened the door to give him my driver's license, a cup of sleet drizzled onto my leg.

Sigh.

I parked the Viper that night, and let it sit until the delivery man came back for it. He drove it away on a glorious spring-fever kind of day.